Once again, why I hate the state of American education.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

I had to prove to my 11th grade English teacher that disorientated was a word. Sad day...

After that, he differed to my vocabulary in times of duress.

was your teacher like 19-20(and inexplicably stupid)or what?

To be fair the first "t" always puzzled me.

 

[rokkolpo]

I had to prove to my 11th grade English teacher that disorientated was a word. Sad day...

After that, he differed to my vocabulary in times of duress.

was your teacher like 19-20(and inexplicably stupid)or what?

To be fair the first "t" always puzzled me.

what,s a what's a ''t''

 

[scotth266]

That said, my favorite book was kind of a surprise. How many people hear "literary classics" and think Bless Me, Ultima at any point?

Never even heard of it

My aunt gave me a copy of In The Name Of The Rose [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Name_of_the_Rose]: that would kind of testify to my reading ability. I found it completely boring though, and prefer much simpler fare, such as Shade's Children [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shade%27s_children].

 

[Lexodus]

Somebody was telling me that, to get a feel for literature in general, their class was allowed to nominate one book for everyone to read. Someone in their class volunteered Twilight as required reading, citing it as a 'powerful and romantic story, with wonderful and believable characters'. I would have shot them then, even if they were an IRL troll.

 

[elemenetal150]

really my senor years we read "The Lord of the Flies", "The Stranger", "Passage to India", "Great Expectations", "Cry, the Beloved Country", and all of The Canterbury Tales.....your school is beat....were do you live? please tell me so I never move there and raise my children in that school system

 

[VanityGirl]

snip

Sounds like your high school was crap. I went to school (6 months of senior year) in a small country town in Georgia. Georgia is very low on the US education ratings, but we read Dante's Inferno, Beowulf and things of that nature.... =\
In my other high school, I had to read the Metamorphisis, which is a pretty difficult story to understand.

I feel sorry for you, and to think Georgia's education supposedly sucks.

 

[Raineheart]

Just a quick point to the people in the thread with the "Aluminum" and "Aluminium" differences, the original spelling is Aluminium, with a second "i", according to IUPAC(International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry). However, both spellings are accepted by the IUPAC, since "Aluminum" was recognized as an acceptable variant in 1993.

 

[thepj]

Dude that sucks, our curriculim dictates we must study 4 classic poets, a shakespearian work , 2 novels and learn essay compostion, writing styles, lol thats just in two years. Not to sound too "bash the americans" but your english is atrocious.

Aluminum - AH-LU-MI-NUM NOT AH-LU_MIN_I_UM <<< tip of the iceberg

I didn't really have many complaints in any of my other classes, mostly because I took advanced everything else usually. Any other "bad" classes came down to the teacher. It's just English I had a real problem with. Also, we 'Mer'cans don't say aluminium. I think that's a few British. Don't quote me on that though. And sorry if you are British and that is not the case.

acctualy it's all British that say aluminium.

OT: I'm in a grammer school so it's not to bad but when i hear about the state of other state schools in the UK then i despair, we have one part time teacher who teaches at another school and gives her year 11 class there questions that she gives the year 7's here, because they can just about cope with them as long as they get a little help with some of the trickier stuff (or so she tells us)


plus i don't think the national textbooks help either, all the schools in my area use the same textbook which compared with the ones my maths teacher gives us sometimes are a crock of shit, the old ones are in black and white and from the eightes but i got distracted one night reading it cause of something interesting and before i knew it i understood trigonometry, the ones every school in the area uses are just pretty colours and an example or 2, they don't teach you anything

 

[thepj]

I had to prove to my 11th grade English teacher that disorientated was a word. Sad day...

After that, he differed to my vocabulary in times of duress.

was your teacher like 19-20(and inexplicably stupid)or what?

To be fair the first "t" always puzzled me.

what,s a what's a ''t''

i do belive he's refering to the first "t" in disorientated

 

[TheFacelessOne]

Really? I learn a new word everyweek, and learn things I didn't even know about!
(Which have made me drop my arrogant attitude of knowing everything)

This is 7th grade, PreAP, people!

Still, I do agree. The American education system has been barfed on.

 

[Agema]

It's not just the USA.

I teach in a middle-ranking UK University, and I find the general calibre of students pretty disappointing.

 

[Doug]

Am I the only one who thinks Shakespear(*, **) plays are overhyped in this day and age? I mean, sure, in this day, everything was in context and made sense. But these days, half of the references make little to no sense, even if you decode the ole' English. I would have prefered to read Frankstein when I was in school, myself. Ok, MacBeth was good, but still not fun to read.

They make sense, but he's very overhyped. The Tempest? Frankly, I could write better in year three.

For English GCSE and A Levels, I've had to study extensively:

Romeo and Juliet
Pride and Prejudice
Saving Private Ryan (studying it sucks out the fun, I tell you)
Lord of the Flies (Egad, that book was SHIT)
A fuckton of poetry
Death of a Salesman and some other drivel by that git Arthur Miller
And some other shit I've probably forgotten.

*Shakespeare
**This one has bugged me for a while now. What the fuck is a 'Shakespeare Play?' You don't get a 'Tolkien Book' or a 'Shakespeare Poem' or 'Shakespeare Sonnet' (although you do get a '(Michael Bay's) Michael Bay Film (Directed by Michael Bay (MICHAEL BAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111oneone)). It's just a play, written by Shakespeare.

Oh, I know they make sense when you take into account the context of his day and age, and when you translate the ole' English into something we can understand, but really, why do we have to study it in old English? l33t and txt speak make more sense to me than ole English - at least with them you can find a translater via Google or by waylaying a youth.

As for what we had to study:

Romeo and Juliet (and that 'bleh' movie version)
MacBeth (and a fairly awesome movie version, even with its age)
Thunder and Lightnings
Poetry, none of which I remember.

I have to wonder if it'd just be more useful to school pupils to read some Terry Pratchett - they might actually like it and learn something of how society and the world works (note: Not his first few books, which where abit too ... dry, really). Ok, he's not a literally giant, who's works will likely stand the age's, but I know I would have engaged with my English class better if we were prompted to read that.

 

[Doug]

It's not just the USA.

I teach in a middle-ranking UK University, and I find the general calibre of students pretty disappointing.

What subject?

 

[Agema]

It's not just the USA.

I teach in a middle-ranking UK University, and I find the general calibre of students pretty disappointing.

What subject?

Neuroscience/Pharmacology.

 

[Epitome]

It's not just the USA.

I teach in a middle-ranking UK University, and I find the general calibre of students pretty disappointing.

What subject?

Neuroscience/Pharmacology.

People who worked hard enough to get into pharmacology and neuroscience are bad students? That suprises me, is the bar not set very high for that kind of thing?

 

[PhiMed]

The unfortunately reality is that most public school teachers have to serve as part teacher, part warden. Most public schools are absolute zoos, and very few people with any aptitude to teach would put themselves in a situation like that. I don't blame teachers. I blame a sick and dying society.

 

[Jirlond]

In Scotland we read Frankenstein in 3rd year - 3 years before senior year.

We read the playwrights as a class and the books seperately. Did your teacher give up because she was a moron or because the class found it too challenging?

Also you should watch QI, most of the things you googled are dealt with by the awesome Stephen Fry.

*runs in out of breath*

Did someone say QI?!

Why yesssss.

Nice avatar! I was just pointing out that Stephen Fry told me the difference between poison and venom.

 

[Mekado]

Maybe not so much on topic but last week the cashier at the store (18yo at the *most*) had to use a calculator to do 5x10 , no really, i'm not kidding...

... It's not a 6 digit multiplication...come on now.

I got out of highschool before they started using calculators for everything in math, thank god...

 

[FiveSpeedf150]

In this case, pertaining to English.

I was googleing the difference between poisonous and venomous (which I found out) and as I typed in my question the auto fill took over. The first suggestion by google after typing in "what is the difference between" was "what is the difference between effect and affect".

Sorry if this seems like over tread ground, but I have to release some bile. This bile stems from my experience in English class. My English classes were nothing more than exercises in multicolored pen use and drilling in white guilt. We didn't read ANY classic literature. The closest we got was 100 pages into Frankenstein, the teacher gave up and moved to.... multicolored pen use. I think I may have learned 3 new words in 4 years of High school. 2 of those words I learned in economics.

Back to the books, we didn't read anything memorable, thought provoking, or challenging. We tried Frankenstein in my Senior year and, like I said, the teacher gave up. He gave up because it was too difficult for most of the class. A book I read on my own in 6th grade was too hard for 12th graders... I'm just beyond happy that Twilight hadn't made it to my school while I was there, we would have read it had it been popular. We didn't need to read the Mars trilogy, but we could have at least finished Frankenstein. Maybe a part of the problem was that all of my high school English teachers almost exclusively used Ebonics...

I'm afraid you just went to a garbage high school.

 

[Rolling Thunder]

*Shakespeare
**This one has bugged me for a while now. What the fuck is a 'Shakespeare Play?' You don't get a 'Tolkien Book' or a 'Shakespeare Poem' or 'Shakespeare Sonnet' (although you do get a '(Michael Bay's) Michael Bay Film (Directed by Michael Bay (MICHAEL BAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111oneone)). It's just a play, written by Shakespeare.

You've clearly never seen a Shakespearian work in your life, have you?